June 3, 2025

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: The Fantastic Four — Return Of The M-She-U?

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 10

EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL — at least in the UK:

One reason I started writing this newsletter is so we could share information and data with people they might have missed but really need to know. Here are two things that caught me eye over the last 48 hours, which I think you really need to know:

Firstly, in the UK, the number of illegal migrants and small boats entering the country is now rapidly spiralling, fuelling the immigration crisis and a broader collapse of public trust in the established parties and, for that matter, the entire system.

On Saturday alone, some 1,195 illegal migrants entered the UK on 19 small boats. This is the largest number for a single day this year, the fourth largest on record since the border crisis began, and means that overall number this year, nearly 15,000 illegal migrants, is some 42 per cent higher than the same point last year.

While immigration is already the number one issue in British politics, and is the main reason why millions of voters are abandoning the established parties for Reform, the numbers now look set to spiral even higher, with The Times this weekend forecasting that around 50,000 migrants will arrive this year, a new annual record.

None of this will surprise longer-term readers, of course. Even before Labour came to power, in May 2024, we explained why Labour’s plan for “smashing the gangs” would not work and the crisis would get worse. And this is now happening.

Also happening in the UK: England now has a blasphemy law.

Officially, blasphemy was abolished by New Labour in the 2008 Criminal Justice Act. But today, with the conviction of Hamit Coskun, blasphemy laws now exist in England.

This law has been created by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and District Judge John McGarva. Between them they have prosecuted and found a man guilty of a ‘religiously aggravated public order offence’ because he burned a Quran outside the Turkish consulate. The CPS mounted a prosecution conflating the religious institution of Islam, with Muslims as people, and a British judge has accepted this. Islamic blasphemy codes are now being enforced by arms of the British state, via what the National Secular Society describes as ‘a troubling repurposing of public order laws as a proxy for blasphemy laws’.

Hamit Coskun burned a Quran outside the Turkish consulate in February, before being attacked by a man named Moussa Kadri who has since pleaded guilty to the assault. Mr Coskun was initially charged under the Crime and Disorder Act with ‘intent to cause against the religious institution of Islam harassment, alarm or distress’. This means that the Crown Prosecution Service were treating Islam itself as a person, and a victim of Hamit’s Quran burning. Under English law this is nonsensical, as only people can be harmed in this fashion, so this charge, if it had been successful, would have established a special, protected status for Islam. Weeks ago I made a Freedom of Information request of the CPS, asking in how many instances of ‘the religious institution of Islam’ appeared in recent indictments. Just this morning they responded, saying that it would take too long for them to review all the charges they had made, and that they would not comply with the FOI request.

In other words: Welcome to the Islamic theocracy of Great Britain. “t won’t have escaped your attention that our new backdoor blasphemy laws only seem to cover one religion in particular. Those who seek to ringfence Islam – and Islam alone – from ridicule or criticism no doubt believe they are protecting an embattled little guy. But Coskun’s case rather complicates that narrative.”

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll 29

TRUE, BUT…: Ukraine’s Drone Attack on Russia’s Strategic Bombers Will Not Materially Alter the Military Situation.

As someone who lives practically under the shadow of Cheyenne Mountain and within spitting distance of the Air Force Academy, I appreciate Russia having fewer strategic bombers.

Also:

I wanted a strong Russia as a counter to China. What I got was a weak Russia increasingly beholden to China. So it goes.

Posted at 2:16 pm by Stephen Green 63

MY IRONY METER JUST BROKE: 75th Anniversary Edition of Orwell’s 1984 Comes With a Trigger Warning.

UPDATE: Shock: Orwell’s 1984 Slapped with Trigger Warning.

The 75th anniversary features an introduction by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of “Take My Hand.” She explains why some new readers might find Orwell’s masterpiece upsetting.

“I’m enjoying the novel on its own terms, not as a classic but as a good story, that is until [the main character] Winston reveals himself to be a problematic character,” Kirn reads from the trigger warning text.

Taibbi starts to laugh as Kirn continues.

“[Winston] dislikes nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones … Winston’s views on women are at first despicable to the contemporary reader … he’s the kind of character who can make me put a book down,’” he continues with her text.

“How many books have you thrown away by Hemingway, by Tolstoy?” Kirn asks as an aside before continuing from Perkins-Valdez’s introduction.

“When I was younger that’s exactly what I would have done, but I’m a more seasoned reader now and I know the difference between a flawed character and a flawed story. I remind myself that this is a dystopian novel and Orwell is suggesting misogyny is likely in a totalitarian society and Winston is a product of that environment.”

“Thank you for your trigger warning for ‘1984,’” Kirn said. “It is the most 1984ish thing I’ve ever f***ing read.”

Kirn summarizes the rest of the trigger warning, which includes suggestions that the book is racist.

Wow, you caught him, Dolen! The man who wrote “Shooting an Elephant“ is a crypto-racist in spite of himself. The Bletchley Park racial cryptographers strike again!

Posted at 1:55 pm by Ed Driscoll 56

JONATHAN TURLEY: Marco Rubio declares war on the global censors.

This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stopped feeding the crocodile.

On May 28, 2025, Rubio shocked many of our allies by issuing a new visa restriction policy that bars foreign nationals deemed “responsible for censorship of protected expression” in the U.S.

The new policy follows a major address by Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich challenging our European allies to end their systematic attacks on free speech. Vance declared, “If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people that elected me and elected President Trump.”

At the time, I called the speech “Churchillian” in drawing a bright line for the free world. Rubio’s action is no less impressive and even more impactful.

Europe has faced no consequences for its aggressive efforts at transnational censorship. Indeed, this should not be a fight for the administration alone. Congress should explore reciprocal penalties for foreign governments targeting American companies or citizens for engaging in protected speech.

After Vance spoke in Munich, I spoke in Berlin at the World Forum, where European leaders gathered in one of the most strikingly anti-free speech conferences I have attended. This year’s forum embraced the slogan “A New World Order with European Values.”

That “new world order” is based on an aggressive anti-free speech platform that has been enforced for years by the European Union. At the heart of this effort is the Digital Services Act, a draconian law that allows for sweeping censorship and speech prosecutions. Most importantly, it has been used by the EU to threaten American corporations for their failure to censor Americans and others on social media sites.

The EU, like Communist China, is now in the business of exporting authoritarianism — and we’re under no obligation to buy.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Stephen Green 25

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE:

Clearly, they were asking for it, accepting actual aid instead of paying Hamas a ridiculous markup for stolen aid.

Posted at 1:28 pm by Stephen Green 68

ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE, STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY*: Suspect in Colorado Anti-Semitic Terror Attack Says He Wanted To ‘Kill All Zionist People.’

The suspect in Colorado’s anti-Semitic terror attack said Monday that he had planned the attack for a year, telling federal investigators that he “wanted to kill all Zionist people” and “would do it again.”

Mohamed Soliman, a 45-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt, admitted during a police interview that he specifically targeted the Jewish group that gathered Sunday to raise awareness for Hamas’s hostages, according to an affidavit filed Monday.

The Justice Department on Monday charged Soliman with a federal hate crime. Soliman is also facing state charges of 384 years for 16 counts of attempted murder, 48 years for 2 counts of using an incendiary device, and 192 years for 16 counts of attempted use of an incendiary device, according to Boulder district attorney Michael Dougherty.

Terror charges have not been ruled out, according to acting U.S. attorney J. Bishop Grewell.

Soliman threw Molotov cocktails and used what the New York Times called a “makeshift flamethrower” on peaceful Boulder, Colo., demonstrators, injuring 12 victims, including a Holocaust survivor.

Investigators also found a black container nearby with 14 more Molotov cocktails.

The terror attack came just weeks after anti-Israel terrorist Elias Rodriguez murdered two Israeli embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, as the young couple left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.

*At least according to NBC, who invented plural “lone wolves” in an attempt to keep their readers in the dark: Lone Wolf? Wait. What? You Have to See NBC News’ Boulder Terrorist Attack Headline to Believe It.

Evergreen:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll 41

NOT IF WE HAVE POWERFUL ENOUGH SPACE LASERS: Space assets could be held ransom. Will we have any choice but to pay? “There is an unaccounted-for gap in current space cybersecurity policies that omits the potentially devastating effects of widespread ransomware attacks on space assets. The technical capability to execute a ransomware attack against a satellite is there. Once the first malicious actor successfully ransoms a satellite and receives payment, the floodgates will open. Because of the economics of space assets, owners and operators will likely be forced into a position where payment is their only option and the technical and policy cybersecurity communities are not ready.”

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green 30

GREAT MOMENTS IN HYPERBOLE: David Brooks Invokes Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin To Mark Musk’s Departure From DOGE.

New York Times columnist David Brooks did the not-so-clever trick of insisting he wasn’t saying what he was indeed saying on Friday’s edition of PBS News Hour as he reflected back on Elon Musk’s time at DOGE by comparing him to Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, and Joseph Stalin.

Host Amna Nawaz wondered, “David, how do you look at it? What’s his legacy, if we know that yet?”

Brooks declared that, “As a budget matter, you would not say he had a big effect, but he did manage to destroy NIH and USAID. And the USAID one is the one I haven’t gotten over. And so there’s folks at Boston University who count, how many people have died because of what DOGE did at USAID? And USAID was a very ill-managed organization. That’s true.”

He then claimed, “according to the Boston University folks, so far, 55,000 adults have died of AIDS in the four months since Trump was elected, 6,000 children are dead because of what DOGE did. That’s just PEPFAR, the HIV. You add them all up, that’s 300,000 dead, and we’re four months in.”

At this point, it should be noted that President Trump’s proposed 2026 budget keeps PEPFAR funding steady. With that in mind, Brooks reference to the trio of communist dictators comes across as even more absurd:

Now, you add, accumulate that over four years, the number of dead grows very high. There are mass murderers in the world, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Stalin. We don’t have anybody on the list from America. And I don’t think it’s the same as committing the kind of genocide they did. But by taking away that agency and being at least semi-responsible for the deaths of probably, by the end of this, hundreds of thousands of millions of people, that’s Elon Musk’s legacy. And the people who work at Tesla and SpaceX may want to think about that.

MSNBC’s Anand Giridharadas, borrowing Fonzie’s leather jacket and t-shirt, jumps the shark as well by taking the same talking points and compares Musk to LBJ: MSNBC panel stunned to silence over report on deaths linked to Elon Musk’s DOGE.

UPDATE:

More: Bono’s ‘300,000 dead’ claim over USAID cuts gets smacked down by Rogan, Musk: ‘Liar/idiot.’

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 265

CDR SALAMANDER: US Navy Shipyards: What They Took From Us. “That is what the “Peace Dividend” era bequeathed to this generation. The subsequent results of maintenance backlogs and until-the-crack-of-doom shipbuilding times give testimony to the insufficiency of it all. While we spent this century engaged and distracted by imperial policing and cultural experimentation in Central and Southwest Asia, the People’s Republic of China has built the world’s largest navy. For good measure, they are also closing the capability gap rapidly.”

Posted at 12:17 pm by Glenn Reynolds 19

MORNING IN AMERICA: Job openings showed surprising increase to 7.4 million in April. Complete with an “unexpectedly” moment from CNBC: “Employers increased job openings more than expected in April while hiring and layoffs also both rose, according to a report Tuesday that showed a relatively steady labor market.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll 32

INCOMING UPDATE TO YOUR NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES:

Please place all previous references to “undocumented immigrants” in the memory hole. If you’re still using “illegal aliens,” report immediately to Room 101.

Posted at 11:53 am by Stephen Green 110

WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: The Milky Way may not collide with neighboring galaxy Andromeda after all.’

A titanic cosmic collision between the Milky Way and its closest large galactic neighbor, Andromeda, may not be as sure a thing as scientists thought.

Previously, it had been proposed that there was a good chance that Andromeda and our galactic home, which are moving together, would meet in around 5 billion years and merge to form a daughter galaxy dubbed “Milkomeda.”

New research has revealed that there is a much smaller chance that these two spiral galaxies will slam into each other and merge over the next 10 billion years than was believed. In fact, it’s about 50/50.

If in five billion years, we can’t come up with a better name than Milkomeda, why even bother going on?

Posted at 11:41 am by Stephen Green 83